When was the last time you saw a mall security officer on a Segway? The two-wheel, gyroscopically balanced personal transporters certainly make officers taller, but whether standing on a Segway makes the rider look imposing or goofy is a matter of interpretation.

Ryno Motors of Portland, Ore., hopes to muscle in on Segway’s security-oriented clientele with its gyroscope-equipped electric unicycle, said Chris Hoffman, the company’s founder, in an interview. He says that because the Ryno is roughly the same height as a small motorcycle, officers can stand with their feet on the ground while not underway, keeping eye-level contact with people.

“He can look right at whoever he’s talking to, and if he has to, he can drop it and run after someone,” Mr. Hoffman said.

The Ryno is also – again, based upon interpretation – markedly less dorky-looking than a Segway. Its rider still leans forward to make the Ryno go, but with mountain-bike handlebars, an actual motorcycle seat and a really wide 25-inch motorcycle tire, the rider assumes an attitude – mentally and physically – similar to that of a motorcycle rider. The Ryno will go 10 miles an hour, and its lithium-ion battery has a range of about 10 miles.

The Segway, which has a top speed of 12.5 m.p.h., might win a race against the Ryno, but the Ryno costs less. According to segwayforsale.net, a website providing information for prospective Segway buyers, a new one usually costs $6,000 to $8,000. Mr. Hoffman says the Ryno will retail at $5,295.

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The Ryno electric unicycle.Credit
Ryno Motors

Mr. Hoffman brought a Ryno to New York City last week to show it off, and after Carson Daly rode it around Midtown, Mr. Hoffman took the unicycle to Brooklyn so I could try it out in Ikea’s covered parking garage.

The ride doesn’t feel like a motorcycle’s, nor like a Segway’s. It’s like skiing with no legs. With your feet up on motorcycle-style foot pegs, you lean forward ever further to make the Ryno go faster and lean to turn. The handlebars are connected to the seat, which swings a bit back and forth over the wheel. Leaning did more for turning than did manipulating the handlebars, and before I knew it, I was slaloming the garage’s concrete stanchions as Mr. Hoffman chased after me, clucking worriedly.

Like the Segway, the Ryno has gyroscopes that work in conjunction with sensors to detect the rider’s position and tell the motor what to do. There’s a brake lever on one of the hand grips, but it behaves about as you would expect a unicycle brake to: It’s a little jerky to the unaccustomed. The rider can also slow and stop the Ryno simply by leaning back.

It’s easy to keep the Ryno upright with the handlebars while walking alongside it without tipping it over. Putting it in a resting position is simple – it rolls down onto a little stand projecting from the front.

The Ryno weighs about 150 pounds, which Mr. Hoffman says makes it a good candidate for commuter train travel. There’s a video of him taking it onto a train in Portland, but using one on the subway in New York City, where many stations aren’t equipped with elevators and are often packed with people, would be more difficult. He said each municipality had its own rules about allowing such vehicles aboard public transit. (He and David Combe, Ryno’s sales and marketing director, were going to take it on the A train to Brooklyn, but bad weather prompted them to opt for a Lincoln Navigator. There was a little grunting from both men as they pulled it from the back of the S.U.V.)

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The Ryno's power-level display housing was made with a 3-D printer.Credit
Benjamin Preston

Mr. Hoffmann said that his daughter, Lauren, who was 13 at the time, came up with the idea for the Ryno. She had seen a one-wheel motorcycle in a video game and asked him if he could build something like it. He said she even drew him a picture of what it should look like, which set the wheels in motion, so to speak, on what would become Ryno Motors.

Mr. Hoffman said he saw building an electric unicycle as a problem to be solved, in terms of designing the Ryno to fill an urban mobility need and figuring out a way to make production scalable, but not too expensive. By using a 3-D printer and parts that are readily available, Ryno Motors avoids having to buy expensive machinery to produce the bike. For example, its instrument cluster and rear-light housing are made with a 3-D printer. The dish-shaped wheel cover is fabricated by a company that makes pots and pans. The wheel, handlebars and tire are off-the-shelf items other manufacturers use.

“I don’t want to call up a parts supplier and say, ‘Hey, I need 10,000 of this thing,' ” he said. “But I also don’t want to spend a ton of money on machinery. That would jack up the price.”

Although the Ryno works pretty well at what it’s intended to do, there are a number of kinks to work out. Once it clears the production hurdle, Ryno Motors will have to address the issue of definition: What is a Ryno, and more important, what will lawmakers say it is? Mr. Hoffman says that like the Segway, it is a form of personal mobility, which most states – but not all municipalities – allow riders to operate on public walkways. Once that problem is worked around, it will be a matter of getting people used to the idea of sharing sidewalk space with something like the Ryno.

Mr. Hoffman said that the company would figure out distribution as it went along.

“Motorsports dealers would probably be a less likely outlet than a Segway dealer or something similar,” he said, adding that even the Harley crowd might find it useful as a runabout at rallies.

As of Tuesday, Mr. Hoffman said the company had already received about 100 orders and planned to begin delivering machines April 16.